Jorge Mendes' clients include Radamel Falcao, Diego Costa and James Rodriguez... but agent's influence raises questions about who really owns football’s stars
- 'Super agent' Jorge Mendes boasts Angel Di Maria and James Rodriguez among his clients
- Diego Costa and Eliaquim Mangala also clients of Portuguese
- 48-year-old earned £20million from transfer negotiations with Man United this summer
- Total transfers negotiated by Mendes total over £1billion
- Mendes carries four mobile phones and is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Italian
- Cristiano Ronaldo described Mendes as a 'fair and honest man'
- Jose Mourinho considers Mendes the best agent in the world
Angel
di Maria, James Rodriguez, Diego Costa and Manchester City’s Eliaquim
Mangala are among his clients, moving clubs in the past two months alone
in permanent transfers worth £208.5million.
And
that does not take into account the potential £51.3m final transfer
involved in Colombian striker Radamel Falcao’s move from Monaco to
Manchester United.
No
wonder, the charming 48-year-old Portuguese ‘super agent’ Jorge Mendes,
friend and adviser to footballing stars from Cristiano Ronaldo to Jose
Mourinho, has been hailed for ‘winning’ the transfer window. And not
just one.
VIDEO Scroll down to see Falcao and Rodriguez practice one-twos in Colombia training
Super-agent: Jorge Mendes, pictured with Radamel Falcao, boasts some of the world's best players as clients
Top clients: Following the transfers of Angel di Maria and Falcao, Mendes earned £20m from Man United
Discussions: Mendes chats with Monaco's sporting director Vadim Vasilyev at a Ligue 1 game this season
The Mail on Sunday have calculated Mendes has negotiated transfers totalling £1,068,370,548. So far.
With
a typical ‘take’ of 10 per cent commission per deal, he will have
cleared some £20m-plus this summer, and £100m-plus in commissions alone
in his career. But his earnings do not stop there. Via his company
GestiFute he also owns stakes in many players.
Mendes,
married with five children, carries four mobile phones, is fluent in
English, Spanish, French and Italian, and also acts as a consultant to
other agencies who own and trade in players.
Total of Mendes' transfer negotations
Big deal: Mendes has negotiated many transfers
As
such he represents what many fans see as the good, the bad and the ugly
of modern football. He is, simultaneously, a key figure in a dynamic
marketplace where you can rise on hard work and talent; a major player
in a parasitic industry where hangers-on prosper; and a key figure in
the often murky waters of vested interests where just a few people
control many of the players and, arguably, the clubs.
That
is not to traduce Mendes. Those who know him say he is engaging and
provides good pastoral care. ‘He’s with players for the long haul, not
the quick buck,’ says one associate.
Ronaldo
says Mendes is a ‘fair and honest man’ who he trusts ‘completely’.
Mourinho said of him in 2010: ‘When I was told there was to be an award
for the best agent in the world, I was immediately convinced that the
award had to be Jorge Mendes.’ The Chelsea boss also says Mendes
encourages players to ‘respect their commitments’ to clubs. Sir Alex
Ferguson says Mendes is ‘the best agent I dealt with, without a doubt’.
Also
not in any doubt is Mendes’s increasing influence. GestiFute’s client
list contains 58 names, two of them managers, Mourinho and Valencia’s
Nuno Espirito Santo, the former goalkeeper known as Nuno.
On target: Chelsea striker Diego Costa, another Mendes client, has already scored four Premier League goals
The best: Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho was convinced Mendes should be named the best agent in the world
Real
Madrid’s Pepe and Fabio Coentrao are also on the list, as are United’s
David de Gea and Anderson, and Monaco’s Ricardo Carvalho and Joao
Moutinho.
Eighteen
players are aged 23 or under, most of them in Portugal and Spain.
Spotting potential and following it through is a hallmark of Mendes’s
business.
He
grew up in Lisbon, the son of a gas plant worker for Portugal’s biggest
petrol company, Petrogal. By 20 he was playing semi-professional
football as a left winger. He ran a video store, then opened a bar and
club in coastal town Caminha. There he met Nuno, then 22, and helped him
move to Deportivo La Coruna.
Eighteen
years later, Nuno has been handed three young Mendes clients on loan
this summer in a loan intake that also includes (non-Mendes clients)
Alvaro Negredo and Bruno Zuculini, both from Manchster City.
By
helping the young Nuno, Mendes was on his way, a fledgling agent at 30.
He next helped midfielder Costinha get his break, from lowly Nacional
to Monaco, then took winger Capucho from little Vitoria Guimaraes to
Porto. His contacts grew, as did his rivalry with the then dominant
Portuguese agent Jose Veiga. The pair had a scuffle over Luis Figo in
Lisbon airport in 2002.
On the move: Defender Eliaquim Mangala joined Premier League champions Manchester City this summer
Big reputation: Gestifute's client contains 58 names thanks to Mendes' increasing influence in the game
Meeting: Mendes helped Valencia manager Nuno move to Deportivo La Coruna when the boss was 22
Mendes
didn’t land that client from Veiga but he did bag Hugo Viana, Ricardo
Quaresma and Ronaldo. Crucially, he charmed a client from another agent,
Jose Baidek; the client was Mourinho and the truly big time beckoned.
By
Euro 2008, Mendes was representing every major Portuguese footballer.
He was agent to 16 of the 23-man squad, and to Portugal’s manager Luiz
Felipe Scolari, who he then took to Chelsea.
In
such a high-stakes environment it is inevitable Mendes has upset
people. He was accused of poaching Nani (in 2007) and Bebe (in 2011)
from their respective former agents Ana Almeida and Goncalo Reis, just
before those players made moves to United. They said he pinched their
players; he said they wanted his help to make progress.
Reis
said of his muscling in on the Bebe deal: ‘When Mendes arrived I was
out of the transaction. It’s a sad thing that the one who discovers a
player is not able to stay with him when big clubs are interested.’
Star names: Real Madrid's deadly duo of James Rodriguez and Cristiano Ronaldo are also Mendes clients
The
Bebe transfer also highlights another aspect of Mendes’s business —
owning players. His firm GestiFute earned about £2.87m from the £7.4m
United paid for Bebe for their share of his ‘economic rights’.
Another
of Mendes’s recent client moves took Spanish striker Adrian Lopez from
Atletico Madrid to Porto, with Porto paying £8.7m for 60 per cent of the
player and the other shareholding an unspecified third party.
Another
Mendes client, 21-year-old Portuguese midfielder Andre Gomes, on loan
at Nuno’s Valencia from Benfica, is owned — entirely separately from his
loan move — by Valencia’s Singaporean billionaire owner, Peter Lim.
Third-party
ownership (TPO) is a regulatory minefield. In England it is prohibited
by FA rules and opposed by the Premier League, whose spokesman said: ‘It
threatens the integrity of competitions, reduces the flow of transfer
revenue contained within the game, and has the potential to exert
external influences on players’ transfer decisions.’
Good move: Adrian Lopez celebrates a goal with new Porto strike partner Jackson Martinez
A
report last year by auditors KPMG said there were about 1,100 TPO
footballers at work around Europe, in total worth about £1bn.
Sources
say four — among them Mangala — and perhaps more of the 100-plus
players coming to the Premier League this summer were third-party owned —
before the English clubs took 100 per cent ownership. Liverpool’s Lazar
Markovic and United’s Marcos Rojo were among them.
Chelsea’s
parent company, via a subsidiary firm, is believed to own a group of
TPO players, but none in England, so no rules are broken. Mendes has
been linked to that fund as consultant.
Mendes
didn’t own Mangala, he is ‘just’ the player’s agent and worked with
several parties as City paid about £40m for the player. The £40m was
split between Porto, an ‘ownership fund’ called Doyen and another called
Robi Plus, with agency fees on top.
No wonder Mendes, pictured so often with his clients recently, is always smiling.
All smiles: Mendes poses with Falcao and the Colombian striker's lawyers Paulo Rendeiro and Varlos Osorio
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